


Comeback Story

by marycontraire



Series: Don’t Say It’s Over [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF, Mighty Ducks (Movies)
Genre: Coming Out, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, This Fic Was Brought to You by My Unstoppable Joshua Jackson Thirst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21951439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marycontraire/pseuds/marycontraire
Summary: At this hour, the rink’s floodlights are shut off, but a lone figure, undeterred, loops across the ice in the low ambient light from the street lamps.  It’s too dark and too far away for Adam to see a face, but he’d recognize those moves anywhere.  He should: he spent pretty much every waking moment between the ages of twelve and eighteen cataloguing every detail of Charlie Conway’s existence.
Relationships: Adam Banks/Charlie Conway
Series: Don’t Say It’s Over [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588756
Comments: 26
Kudos: 147
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Comeback Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thegrayness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrayness/gifts).



> So, you specifically requested a fic where Charlie’s career was hockey-related and Adam wore a suit.... I went ahead and wrote the exact opposite. Hope you still enjoy — it fits your overarching request of a story of them as adults. Also, I apologize in advance for errors and for the brevity of the other Ducks’ appearance; this was a true 48 hour treat. I was able to get someone to take a look at the first half, but that’s about it. Happy Yuletide, quack, etc.!

Brisson isn’t wild about Adam waiving his NTC for Minnesota in the middle of November. “Hextall can’t move you somewhere you don’t want to go,” he says, tinny over Adam’s shitty cell connection. “You’ve got to think about where you are in your career. This is the time to take a chance on a team with prospects for the Cup, or join a younger team that might value you in a leadership role.” 

The NHL, Adam has come to realize, is deeply committed to the notion that older players are inherently leaders. It’s a bullshit notion. Adam wasn’t a leader at twelve or at sixteen, and he’s not a leader now at thirty-seven. “Pat,” he says, “I’m waiving the No-Trade. I want to go home.”

And that is pretty much that. He throws some clothes and his laptop in a duffel, hires people to pack up his Old City condo and put it on the market, and gets on a plane. Minutes after he lands, Mikko Koivu calls him on his cell — God only knows how he got the number, as Adam tries hard to stay the hell out of the NHL’s fratty social scene — to welcome him back to the Twin Cities. “It’s great to have another Minnesotan on the team,” he says. “The fans here really love a local.” 

_The fans here really love Parise,_ Adam thinks but does not say. _I haven’t produced numbers like his in years._ “Thanks, man,” is what he says. “Good to be back.” 

__“Is seventeen degrees out right now,” Mikko chuckles. “So you should feel right at home.”_ _

__The Wild office has sent him a driver, of course. His name is Sam, and he informs Adam that a hotel room has been booked for him, but Adam directs him to his old neighborhood instead. It’s nearly midnight, long past the time when his parents would ordinarily be in bed, but his father, still dressed, walks out over the icy sidewalk to greet him as he gets out of the car. “Got an alert on my phone,” he says by way of explanation._ _

__“Aren’t you tech-savvy,” Adam says, hefting his duffel back out of his father’s reach._ _

__“Son,” his father says, lifting a hand to Adam’s shoulder. “Is this good news?”_ _

__Adam shrugs. He’s been dreading a trade for months, and his father knows it. “I’m glad to be home,” he says._ _

__“Well, we’re very glad to have you. Come on in.”_ _

__When Adam first landed his pricey Flyers contract nearly a decade ago, he’d tried to persuade his parents to let him buy them a new house, but they’d been reluctant to leave a neighborhood they’d lived in so long, so he settled for remodeling the downstairs for them instead. The kitchen, where his mother fusses about making him some hot tea, is relatively new, as are the living and dining rooms that now open onto it. But when Adam at last fends off his parents’ attentions and escapes to the second floor, his bedroom is exactly as it always was, an unsettling shrine to his childhood. Adam honestly hasn’t spent much time here since he was a kid: he and the other Ducks boarded their last three years of high school at Eden Hall, and then Adam was off to play for the London Knights, and after that the Oilers. His summers are mostly spent alternating between working out and hiding out at his cabin on the North Shore of Lake Superior._ _

__Although his father has had a liberal hand in displaying pictures of Adam in his various NHL uniforms in the living room, this bedroom is wall to wall District Five Ducks — even the comforter cover is that hideous teal color. Most of the dozens of goal celebration photographs thumbtacked to the wallpaper around the room feature Adam and Charlie Conway. Specifically, they feature Adam clinging to Charlie, while Charlie raises his hands in victory or slaps the top of Adam’s helmet. Adam thought he was being subtle, back then, only featuring Charlie in sports photos, as though the context might draw anyone’s attention away from the open adoration on Adam’s face. He’s not looking at the camera in any of the photos — he’s staring right at Charlie in every one._ _

__Adam Banks has always been a bit of a one- hit wonder. He’s only ever excelled at hockey, and he’s only ever fallen in love once. Now he’s nearing forty, traded off for a younger player by the team he thought he’d remain with till he retired. And he hasn’t seen Charlie in nearly twenty years._ _

____

&

Adam, in fact, has beaten the Wild back to Minnesota — they finished up an away game against the Caps last night and didn’t land until three in the morning. Accordingly, their practice isn’t until the afternoon, and the Wild office sends a real estate agent to meet him at his parents’ in the morning, to help find him a rental apartment so he can “settle in.” Her name is Suzanne.

“I’ve pulled up all the units in high rises with amenities,” she says, after Adam has lowered himself into the front seat of her Subaru. “Of course, you may want to look at purchasing a house somewhere down the line, but in the meantime it will be useful to have conveniences like a concierge and gym access.”

“No thanks,” Adam says.

“Hmmm?” Suzanne replies, as though not sure she’s heard him.

“Just get me as close to Bryant Square Park as you possibly can,” Adam says.

Suzanne doesn’t take her eyes off the road, but her face does some interesting gymnastics as she processes this request. “Mr. Banks…” she begins.

“Adam’s fine,” he says.

“Well, Adam. I understand you’re from around here, but it’s been a while, and that neighborhood isn’t currently the _most_ desirable…”

“Oh, trust me, it was worse back then,” Adam says. “I know what I’m getting myself into.”

“Perhaps we should just drive through first, so you can have a _look_ at what I mean,” Suzanne says reluctantly. 

It turns out houses in the area go for about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to, at most, three hundred. Within forty-eight hours, Adam owns one looking directly onto the tiny park: a squat, unattractive little two-story, three-bedroom. He’s pretty sure Suzanne will be dining out on that story for months, but he doesn’t care.

Through all of his front windows, he can see a group of kids in mismatched gear playing hockey on the park’s outdoor rink. Adam even goes so far as to walk outside and hand one of his own Flyers jerseys to the short, overweight kid in the goal, who wastes only a moment being completely confused before deciding not to question his good fortune and donning the garment. A Goldberg for the new millennium.

&

Parise seems to have been appointed Adam’s welcome wagon, whether by the front office or by Koivu, Adam doesn’t know. Perhaps Parise appointed himself. He seems genuinely thrilled to have another proud son of Minnesota on the team. Adam decides not to point out that when he was growing up, the North Stars were the home team. By the time the Wild hit the ice for the first time, Adam was already in Canada, playing Major Juniors.

“I feel obligated to take you to do something very Minneapolis,” Parise says. “Like eat a Jucy Lucy at Matt’s Bar.”

“Sorry, can’t,” Adam says.

“A Minneapolis native who doesn’t like a Jucy Lucy?” Parise exclaims. “For shame, Banksy!”

“No,” Adam says, “I mean I can’t. I was banned for life from Matt’s Bar. When I was in high school, my hockey friends and I had a contest to see who could eat the most Jucy Lucys in fifteen minutes. A bunch of us ended up vomiting all over the floor.”

Parise laughs out loud. _“That’s_ a hell of a story,” he says. “Fair warning — if the front office gets ahold of it, it will be in every local paper by the end of the week. Come to think of it, that would be pretty good press for Matt’s Bar, too. I bet they’d let you stage a comeback.”

Adam shrugs. “Not sure it would be the same without Charlie hurling on my favorite pair of sneakers.”

Parise laughs. He doesn’t ask who Charlie is.

&

The thing Adam’s been pretending not to wait for happens in mid-December. It’s past 11, below freezing, and Adam’s just driven back from the arena after a win against the Leafs. He climbs out of his car, still in his game day suit, and takes care not to slip on the icy, uneven sidewalk in his dress shoes. Out of newly-formed habit, he looks out across Bryant Square Park. At this hour, the rink’s floodlights are shut off, but a lone figure, undeterred, loops across the ice in the low ambient light from the street lamps. It’s too dark and too far away for Adam to see a face, but he’d recognize those moves anywhere. He should: he spent pretty much every waking moment between the ages of twelve and eighteen cataloguing every detail of Charlie Conway’s existence.

Adam has an old pair of hockey skates in the house, but, seized by a terrifying certainty that Charlie will be gone for good if Adam turns his back on him again, he makes his way, gingerly, onto the ice in his suit and loafers. 

“Hey, Spazway!” he calls.

The figure at the far end of the ice falters, lets the puck he’s handling spin out into a snowbank, and slowly turns to skate over to where Adam is standing, the burning cold of the ice radiating through the inadequate leather soles of his shoes.

Charlie looks nothing like he used to, and yet somehow exactly the same. He’s finally managed to find a flattering haircut, far shorter than Adam remembers his hair ever being before. He’s also grown a genuinely impressive beard. Adam would have thought it a terrible idea to cover a face like Charlie’s, but it’s undeniably working for him. It makes him look… grown-up. Masculine. When they were young, Charlie was cute. Now, Charlie is… handsome. Adam is so, so very fucked.

Slowly, the hawkish look of suspicion on Charlie’s face is replaced by an enormous, toothy grin, and, yes, that’s still just the same. “Well, of all the gin joints in all the world,” he says.

“How long have you been waiting for a good excuse to say that?” Adam says.

“A long, long fucking time,” Charlie says. Adam knows the feeling.

“The fuck are you doing here, cake-eater?” Charlie says, still grinning. 

Adam shrugs. “Take it up with Hextall and Fletcher,” he says.

“I know you were traded, Banksy, I don’t live under a _rock_ ,” Charlie says. “I mean what are you doing on my rink in my shitty neighborhood?”

“It’s my neighborhood, too,” Adam says. 

“It is _not_ your neighborhood,” Charlie objects. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere in Edina?”

“My house is right there,” Adam says, gesturing.

“You’re _shitting_ me.”

“Funny, that’s what the real estate agent said.” Charlie gawks at him in disbelief. “Come over and see for yourself,” Adam says.

It takes a few minutes for Charlie to change out of his skates into his discarded boots on the rink side bench. They make their way around the square on the sidewalk, not the ice — a broken ankle is the last thing Adam needs this season. He has to shoulder his way in through his front door, which is a bit sticky, and of course the house is freezing once they stomp the snow off and shuffle in — the thermostat, like everything else in it, is old and can’t be controlled by his iPhone.

“Damn,” Charlie says. “Hard to believe the off-brand NHL version of _Cribs_ hasn’t come through here yet.”

“Funny,” Adam says. He’s trying for sarcasm, but he’s not sure he succeeds; having Charlie here, in his house, real and alive and _present_ , not just a mental echo of his teenage self, is intoxicatingly surreal. “Let me see if I can dig up a beer or something for you,” he says, sticking his head into his fridge, a relic from the early eighties. It’s full of containers of pasta with broccoli and chicken or pasta with spinach and salmon — his mother must have dropped them off earlier today. In Philly, Adam had a meal delivery service during the hockey season, but in Philly Adam also lived in an attended building — the concierge would refrigerate his deliveries if they arrived when he was away. Suzanne was right about the convenience aspect of that, though the present moment more than proves that living on Bryant Square Park is worth it. “Aha!” he exclaims upon finding a solitary can in the back. “Just the one, though. Mind sharing?”

Charlie is already rummaging through Adam’s hideous mint green cabinets in search of cups. His shelves are, of course, disappointingly bare. “Jesus, it’s like Soviet Russia in here,” Charlie comments.

“Yeah, my shit is still in boxes,” Adam says. “Haven’t had much time to unpack.” He cracks the can open and pours its contents into the spoils of Charlie’s raid: two plastic Wild cups scrounged from the locker room at the practice facility. 

“Well, you’ve been busy,” Charlie says, gazing down into his half-full cup. God, his eyelashes are still so long. Adam spent hours staring at those eyelashes when they roomed together back at Eden Hall. He thought he remembered them perfectly, but somehow the real thing is exponentially more striking. “Congrats on the Leafs game, by the way,” Charlie says, glancing up and swallowing a sip of his beer.

“You saw it?” Adam asks, wishing it didn’t mean so much to him.

“Eh, just bits of it,” Charlie says. “I had a fuckton of work to do. But college students are starting to be home for winter break, so my office is lousy with do-gooder, unpaid interns. I made them turn it on in the break room and come get me whenever it seemed like something exciting was going to happen.”

Adam chuckles. “I’m sure your interns thought that was a wonderful use of their time and expertise.”

“I’m teaching them the disappointments of the world, Banksy. It’s a very valuable lesson.” 

Doesn’t Adam know it. “So what is it exactly you do that entitles you to do-gooder college interns?”

“Oh, law, of course. Originality was never my forte.”

Law. Of course. Adam can imagine Charlie being good at that — he was always a tenacious motherfucker. “Gordon must be proud,” he says.

Charlie makes a dramatic noise of disbelief around a mouthful of beer. “Gordon thinks I’m a moron,” he says. “I was with the District Attorney’s office for years, but I got sick of sending people to jail, so I joined this juvenile justice non-profit instead to defend little assholes for basically no money. I think Gordon was hoping I’d run for office or something instead.”

“Well, you’re very electable,” Adam grins. He’s not wrong; Charlie’s always had that _thing,_ that thing that makes people want to follow him anywhere. People obviously — notably —including Adam.

“Hilarious, Banksy,” Charlie says. 

“Well,” Adam says. “I’d be lying if I said I was surprised you chose to be a professional underdog instead.”

Charlie’s smile is the low winter sun. “Here’s to fighting against overwhelming odds,” he says, raising his Wild cup.

“Hear, hear,” Adam says, clicking his own plastic glass against Charlie’s before draining his share of the beer.

“Now,” Charlie says, “do you happen to have a pair of ice skates somewhere accessible? It’s been far too long since you skated circles around my pathetic efforts at hockey.”

“I’ll go grab them,” Adam says. He doesn’t say that it never felt to him like he was skating circles around Charlie; it felt like he had fallen into orbit, unable to get any closer but equally powerless to break his gravitational pull.

&

The next time Adam sees Charlie is two days later, after a one goal loss to the Oilers, of all teams. (It’s always worse losing to teams he used to play for, like some sick confirmation that they’re better off without him.) Adam hasn’t scored yet, with the Wild. No one’s been bold enough to say the word _drought_ since he was traded from Philly, but he is getting a lot of press questions about how he’s settling in.

“Don’t even worry about them, man,” Parise said to him after the post-game press scrum. “Plenty of time for a comeback.” Adam just grunted at him, genuinely tired after three periods of hockey at age thirty-seven. 

Privately, he’s started to think of Zach Parise as the poor man’s Charlie Conway. Parise is friendly and well liked, but he doesn’t have that bulletproof _charm_. He’s got what the NHL talking heads call leadership skills — he certainly goes out of his way to make sure the disparate players on the Wild gel into a cohesive whole. But he doesn’t _quite_ have the charisma necessary to make that whole greater than the sum of its parts. He has the kind of grit that gets you through three periods of bloody hockey, but he probably doesn’t have the kind of grit that enables the dirt-poor kid of a young single mother to drag himself out of a shitty neighborhood and into a successful law career through sheer stubbornness and hard work alone. 

He _certainly_ doesn’t have the kind of grit it takes to march right back into the same shitty neighborhood and try to drag a new generation of kids out.

Adam’s home post-game, moping in his pajamas, trying to set up his television and Roku, which he’s finally gotten around to unpacking. It’s late and, as usual, fucking freezing when he hears someone pounding urgently on his door. When he opens it to a gust of fifteen degree air and a few snow flurries, the original Charlie Conway is on his stoop, wearing a long gray coat and brandishing a torn off piece of what looks like legal ruled paper.

“I have a list of ways your team sucked hard tonight,” Charlie says brightly. 

“I believe it’s customary to bring brownies to welcome new neighbors,” Adam says. 

“My way’s more fun, cake-eater,” Charlie insists, pushing past him into the entryway of Adam’s drafty little house. “I’m just going to leave this here for you to peruse at your leisure,” he says, affixing the paper to the fridge with a Morris Arboretum magnet. “Philadelphia?” he questions as he replaces the magnet.

“I unpacked,” Adam says. “Well, sort of. I’m trying.”

“That reminds me,” Charlie says, throwing his coat over Adam’s sectional. He’s wearing a suit underneath, and it looks fantastic on him. This is very unfortunate for Adam. “Did you give Christian Martinez your Flyers jersey? Like, a real one?”

“Who’s Christian Martinez?” Adam asks from his perch on the newly installed rug where he’s attempting to sort through a veritable forest of cables and wires. 

“Neighborhood kid. Plays goalie for District Five. At least, he sort of tries to.”

“Oh, him,” Adam says, remembering. “Yeah, it kind of amused me to see the goalie in orange. Reminded me of Goldberg. You know that kid’s name?”

Charlie waves his hand in dismissal. “Represented him a while back when he got into some legal trouble.”

“ _Legal_ trouble?” Adam says incredulously. “He can’t be more than fourteen!”

“Some kids get a head start,” Charlie says. “What the fuck are you trying to do with those wires? Cause a city wide blackout? You know some people’s heaters work on electric, right?”

“Hilarious.” Adam rolls his eyes. “I’m trying to hook up my Roku to my TV. Ideally to the internet as well.”

“Give me that shit. Electronics hate you.” Charlie gestures imperiously. 

“How the hell would you know? Maybe I’ve become a tech expert in the last two decades.”

“ _Have_ you?” Charlie asks shrewdly. 

Adam just hands him the Roku and wires. 

“Wise choice,” Charlie says.

&

It becomes a routine of sorts. Charlie seems to work late almost every day — certainly every weekday — so after late games they’ll hang out at one of their houses (Charlie lives straight across the park), generally lazing about on a couch having a beer. Often Charlie will bring handwritten lists of complaints about the Wild’s performance, but he doesn’t harp on it enough to annoy Adam.

Adam sends game tickets to the interns at Charlie’s nonprofit by way of apologizing for their having to deal with composing Charlie’s gameplay critiques. Charlie pretends to be deeply offended, but Adam remembers him well enough to be able to tell when he thinks something is funny. 

Adam gets Christmas off, and he’s able to spend it with his family for the first time in a while, since that doesn’t involve days of travel. He gets New Years’ off, too, which enables him to participate in what is apparently a District Five Ducks tradition. (Not their old New Years tradition, which involved them waiting with waterballoons outside neighborhood bars for drunk partygoers to emerge into the freezing Minnesota night.) Rather than going out on what Charlie has dubbed the “worst, most expensive night of the year,” the Ducks stay in, go to bed early, and, when the rest of the world is hungover and sleeping in, they meet early the morning of January 1st for a pickup game of hockey and breakfast at a diner. 

Most of the rest of the team is married with kids at this point, and since all of those kids apparently play hockey, Adam winds up spending most of the gathering fielding NHL questions from them. Perhaps this is why he doesn’t notice tension from any of his former teammates and friends until the very end, when Les and Connie (now married) are buckling their three children into the backseat of their car to head home to the suburbs. 

“It’s great to have you back, Banksy,” Connie says warmly, giving Adam a hug.

“Yeah,” Les says from the other side of the car. “Good to see you finally remembered where you came from.” It sounds pointed to Adam, and it must sound pointed to Connie, too, because she hustles him into the passenger seat with an expression of annoyance. 

Adam waits until he’s back at Charlie’s, scratching the belly of Charlie’s fat cat, Gordie Howe, before he asks about it.

“Well,” Charlie says evasively. “You know.”

“I _don’t_ know, actually,” Adam says. “That’s why I’m asking _you._ ” 

Charlie avoids his gaze for a few more seconds. Adam can actually see the moment when he decides to throw caution to the winds; his head swivels over to face Adam. “Well, we were all pretty pissed at you for a while. You went off to play Major Juniors when the rest of us went to college, you were the only one of us good enough to really have a shot at going pro, and you kept in touch with us at first, but then you got too busy and important and once you were drafted you just didn’t have time for us anymore. It was kind of shitty.”

Adam feels as though his insides have been drenched in icy water. He remembers his first year with the Knights very well — and very differently than Charlie apparently does. “Does everyone think that?” he asks incredulously. 

“Adam, you were young. It was a long time ago. I’m over it, Connie’s over it, Goldberg and Julie are over it, Les will _get_ over it. Digging it up again probably won’t help.”

“It’s not true,” Adam says firmly. “I didn’t just _forget_ about you guys. I _missed_ you. All the time. Especially in London.”

“Bullshit,” Charlie says. He has his combative face on.

Adam takes a deep breath. He was hoping to avoid this for a little longer…. Well, he thought he was hoping to avoid it. Maybe, all this time, he’s been hoping Charlie would force him into it, push him through the years of fossilized terror and into action, the way only Charlie really can. Adam stands up, walks over to the Ikea coat rack nailed to Charlie’s living room wall, and puts on his jacket.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t just storm off like a kid,” Charlie says. 

“I’m not storming anywhere,” Adam says. His voice sounds strangely calm, but his stomach feels hollow, like he’s on a roller coaster. “I’m about to tell you something, and I think I’m going to need an emergency exit once I do.”

“What the fuck are you talking about,” Charlie says flatly. 

Adam takes another deep breath. “I didn’t stop calling and visiting because I didn’t have time for you guys. I stopped because I was avoiding you. And to avoid you, I sort of had to avoid everybody because, well, the Ducks were definitely a package deal back then.”

“And what the fuck did I do?” Charlie says, hostile.

“Nothing. You didn’t do anything. I just decided I needed to avoid you so I could try to get over you.”

“What do you mean get over me? What the hell was there to get over?”

“I’m _gay_ , Charlie. I was in love with you. And it seemed pretty clear that, in the best case scenario, you were going to figure me out and it was going to ruin my friendship with you, and, in the worst case scenario, lots of people were going to figure me out, and it was going to ruin my career. So I decided I just had to make the call myself.”

Charlie is staring at him in silence — he’s still frowning, but he acid has drained out of it somehow. Adam’s never really seen Charlie at a loss for words before. He gives him what feels like at least a minute (but maybe isn’t) before he says, “Yeah, okay. This is what I meant about needing an exit. I guess I’ll see you when I see you.”

Then he leaves.

&

It was some time during their senior year at Eden Hall — Adam can’t remember for certain, but he thinks it was when Charlie orchestrated a tremendous senior prank that involved them rerouting the nearby highway through the single-lane drive on campus — that Dean Buckley angrily demanded of him, “Mr. Banks, if Mr. Conway jumped off the Stone Arch Bridge, would you follow after him?”

“Yes, sir,” Adam had answered. “I believe I would.”

Charlie had laughed uproariously at that, which of course was what Adam had been after: making Charlie laugh, making Charlie look at him in that way he had that made it clear Adam belonged. That he belonged to the inside of the joke, to the team, or, hell, maybe just to Charlie himself. And that was the truth of it — Adam may have wanted Charlie to laugh, but he wasn’t really joking. He’d follow Charlie anywhere, even over a thirty foot drop into the frigid Mississippi. 

That was a hell of a long time ago, but unfortunately for Adam it’s still true, and the first week of the new year, during which he hears nothing from Charlie, is as brutal as the first week of 2000, when he returned to London, Ontario resolute in his conclusion that he couldn’t handle seeing Charlie anymore without backsliding, that if he wanted to set his personal failings aside and play pro hockey, Charlie was a crutch he couldn’t allow himself. It was hellishly lonely, and it made the promising career stretched before him seem cold and unbearably long.

It’s nearly over now— that promising career. Part of Adam — maybe most of him — is clinging desperately to what remains. But another part of him thinks it _has_ been long. And lonely.

Charlie reappears after their away loss to the Avalanche; Adam drives home to find him shooting on the goal in the Bryant Square Park rink. He expects him to flee once Adam parks in front of his house and gets out of the car, but of course he doesn’t — fleeing is Adam’s move, not Charlie’s. When Adam makes his way out onto the ice, Charlie stands his ground. 

“Hey,” Adam says. “How’ve you been?”

“Pissed,” Charlie says, turning away to shoot a puck into the empty net. The motion is fueled more by anger than technique, but the puck finds its mark regardless.

“You’re pissed that I’m gay and had a thing for you when we were kids?” Adam says incredulously.

“No, Adam, that’s not what I’m pissed about.” Charlie seems to loom over Adam in the darkness, but it’s just the skates. Adam knows for a fact that they’re both the exact same height — 6’2”. He knows because he got tall first, which infuriated Charlie, and when Charlie finally started to grow he became obsessed with measuring against Adam to see if he’d caught up. Adam remembers standing back to back with Charlie dozens of times while Charlie demanded of some teammate or other, “Are you _sure_ we’re exactly the same?” All the while Adam could only think of the way Charlie’s back felt against his own.

“What _are_ you pissed about, then?” Adam says.

Charlie just shakes his head and skates over to the bench where his boots are. Adam pretends to consider just going back to his own house and letting Charlie stew, but of course in the end he just follows Charlie’s gravitational pull. 

“You know,” Charlie says, tying his left boot onto his foot, “I think you have this crazy idea — I think you’ve _always_ had it, actually, even since we were twelve — that our friendship is completely lopsided. That you need me, but I don’t need you at all.”

“Well,” Adam says flatly.

“Well what, asshole?” Charlie says angrily. Charlie gets loud when he gets angry. He tends to get close, too — he stands up, skates in hand, and steps right into Adam’s space. They’re eye to eye, noses nearly touching. “It was never like that. I needed you, too, and you just completely disappeared. Because, what, you were too scared to just be honest with me? What if I wanted a say?”

“Wanted a say about what, Charlie? We both know you’re straight.”

“How the hell do you know I wouldn’t have considered it?”

“I shared a room with you in high school, Charlie. You _always_ had a girlfriend, and you got laid, like, constantly. You were not sitting around agonizing over your sexual orientation.”

“Well, I would have. For you, I would have considered it.”

“Fine,” Adam says. “Great. So glad to know that now that it’s too late.” Meeting the intensity of Charlie’s glare eye to eye is getting to be a bit much, so Adam turns and starts trudging back toward his house, careful with his footfalls on the ice.

“What if it isn’t?” Charlie calls out behind him, anger still not completely gone from his voice.

Adam nearly slips and spends several moments that feel _very_ long waiting for his panicky accelerated heartbeat to subside. “Don’t _say_ shit like that, Charlie,” Adam says angrily.

And then there’s a hand on his shoulder, and then it’s turning him gently around on the ice, and Charlie is right there, so close, and then he’s leaning in, his beard brushing against Adam’s cheek, his lips chapped but warm and firm against Adam’s, and it’s _nothing_ like what Adam fantasized about, running his fingers over his lips in bed at night when he was sixteen, but it’s _everything_ he wants now. 

When Charlie draws back, Adam says, “If you’re filled with heterosexual regret right now, I am going to be very disappointed.”

“Shut up, Adam,” Charlie says and kisses him again.


End file.
